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Apr 13, 2015

Amazon Sometimes when you try to delete a file, you see this window: "This file has already been opened and cannot be deleted."

Frustrating, right? I am the boss of my computer; why can't I delete files at will?

One reason is that the operating system is trying to protect you from deleting critical system files required by the OS to run properly, but sometimes the file we are trying to delete is a virus.

So what can I do? How do I delete a virus file successfully?

Background

One day I realized that my browser is infected with advertisement viruses so that when I opened the browser, I saw the popup advertisement. That's annoying. So I decided to kill the virus. It is easy to identify the location of the virus. Simply go to C:\Program Files (x86)\ and look for folders with strange names. In my case, the virus lives in a folder called BrowssingiCleeair. I immediately tried to delete all files in that folder, and I saw the following windows dialog:

C:\Program Files (x86)\BrowssingiCleeair\C0uCDrf9X97ujQ.x64.dll cannot be deleted because Windows explorer is running or has opened it.

But the following files can be deleted successfully just by hitting the Delete key:

This is exactly the problem I described in the beginning. I am trying to delete a file on Windows 7 but it just won't let me delete it. What should I do?

Solution

The solution is: Do NOT delete any files. Instead, go to Control Panel -> Uninstall Software and uninstall BrowssingiCleeair. If you already deleted the files, simply recover them from your Recycle Bin.

Here is a screenshot of the Windows software uninstallation window:

Note that you can often infer which software is virus simply by looking at its name and installation date. Why this software got past me and installed itself successfully is beyond me.

Once you have uninstalled BrowssingiCleeair, C:\Program Files (x86)\BrowssingiCleeair will be an empty folder, which you can delete normally.

P.S. I handled other viruses such as C:\Program Files (x86)\TremendousCCoupo successfully following the same steps.

If this solution does not work for you, reboot your PC and go to Safe Mode, and delete the virus folders in that mode.